>> Good, we need more functional programmers actually solving real
>> problems. But please put your skills to work in an industry other
>> than investment banking.
There are lots of companies outside of investment-banking using
functional programming.
Bluespec, Galois, TypLab, are all serious Haskell users. Larger
companies such as AT&T, Facebook, and Google have all used Haskell for
various projects.
If you look a bit further afield, there are even more companies using
F#, Caml, and Erlang. I use Caml almost exclusively in my day job at
Vector Fabrics – which is poles apart from investment banking. (And
yes, we're always interested in hiring good functional programmers.)
If you want a FP job outside of investment banking, keep an eye on the
CUFP website and the FP mailing lists. Opportunities abound!
Wouter